Sunday, 26 February 2012

A poem a week for 2012 - a record of a year in the life of...


Ben Summerskill...'Our Strong Advice to anyone who disagrees with same-sex marriage, is not to get married to someone of the same sex...'

Let's all the normal people, own marriage...

Let not the marriage of true minds
Find impediment in Church or Government. In definition of sexuality.

Where's the humanity In our democracy
If yet again the divisions and schisms;
The derisions are allowed to play out their public voice

Against private thoughts, personal beliefs.
Those grandiose chiefs with their
Bowler hats and flat caps decreeing

Do you, Mr Normal, take this...?
Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone to be your normal wedded life?

From the comfort of their self satisfaction and congratulation,
Their Absolute rules of 


you may now kiss the bride?

...being normal....
our contrafibulations...


Saturday, 25 February 2012

Reaching out to help Writers Air their Books - Mad March Hares

Following fantastic response from both writers and readers to our February post, platforming and promoting Romantic Fiction from around the globe to the reading public, we are happy to announce that in March we will turn our focus on Thrillers...

How this works...Any Thriller writers should comment on our blog, detailing Title, Author, and a short blurb as well as how and where to purchase.


We will regularly promote the link to writing audiences.... 


Happy posting!

Sunday, 19 February 2012

A poem a week for 2012 - a record of a year in the life of...


Whitney Houston
Ragdoll Blues
Amy Winehouse An old wives tale; only the good die young.
Lamenting muses whose lives have faded -
bright colours tarnished.  In the balance hung
choices ill considered - poor friends blamed.

In flights of fantasy we watched them live.
No grounding patterns they could relate to;
their heartfelt misery could we believe;
still we stand aside and leave their fate to.

They soared above in wondrous flight; laughing                                               and mocking a greying world. Regarding                                                      green pleasures; fluffy clouds; stray dogs barking.
Michael Jackson performingBright clashing symbols; tall poppies waning.
Their discordant chimes of anguish howling.
Our closed senses miss cosmic dust falling.


Whitney Houston dies: The rise and fall of a superstar- BBC News12 February 2012


Papers mourn legend Michael Jackson BBC News  - 26 June 2009

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Frank Bruno MBE does Mrs Godbothers...

Breaking News....

Click to watch the video




  


"As a heavyweight poet... a champion rapper... Frank was the obvious choice to box lyrical with the delicate vernacular of yuf culcher addressed in Mrs Godbothers."  

"We are thrilled that he gave us his time and charm.  A Big thank you from mardibooks." 

"Frank Bruno's pithy performance as a stressed teacher in a classroom of bored teens, intent on their iphones and internal focus brings a real life sense of what is going on in and out of  the classrooms of Britain today."

"Frank bridges a link between generations and brings his own sense of drama to a serious message about teen communication and co-operation...A World Champ."

Sunday, 12 February 2012

So just how do you choose your ebooks?


In a recent straw poll of a variety of age groups, it was revealed that despite best efforts by Amazon to ‘recommend’ similar titles and by a plethora of sites and social media discussions to promote choices, the favoured method for selection is word of mouth.  

This tried and tested mode will of course always come top as we trust the judgements of our real friends as well as the feedback and comments of those celebrity reviewers whom we choose to follow.  Yet this primary route to our next good read is closely tailed, maybe not so bizarrely by going to a bookstore, thumbing through those hallowed pages, breathing in that heady aroma of pulp fiction…

This might not be so daft if we are buying actual books – but this is the preferred course for discovering good reads, irrespective of format, so that the idea of purchasing from our bed/sofa/car/hotel room is mocked by the act of driving into town, parking, paying for parking, finding a bookstore, browsing, recording choices, returning to bed/sofa/car/hotel room to order said choice…

When asked about their habits, the following responses were the most common: 

“The benefit of accessing ebooks is to build a favoured library of great reads that I can take anywhere.  I do not wish to download any old rubbish and ploughing through the stack of sites promoting books is a nightmare.  My friends, my book club, the bookshop in town and the TV chat shows are my trusty sources of recommendations.”

“I only want to choose holiday reading, so I listen to the radio and read the book review pages in the press…”

"As a student, having access to on-line texts means I can search for specific authors, titles, themes and genres, which I do on-line."

Clearly the science of marketing e-books to our purchasers needs to utilise the traditional routes as much as the new and to get smarter at filtering out the splattergun approach in favour of sending a targeted, defined message to specific audiences.  Of course as independent platforms like mardibooks and self-publishers lack the marketing budgets of big corporations and often the technological expertise and man-hours at their disposal, this will always appear an uphill struggle.

As e-books and e-readers are a new technology, utilising technology to seek out digital natives will always be easier than finding and accessing the digital immigrants.  Many adopters of ebook readers are not au fait with social media and will still want the comfort of the multi-sensory purchasing route.  They may be happy to read an e-book, and be competent at downloading, but their preferred route to discovery is not yet via Google...or social media...

Possibly by networking together in concert may prove more beneficial for the independent writer and smaller publishing houses than all adding to the general chaos of white noise.

In the meantime, Happy fishing; happy hunting for that elusive customer.

A poem a week for 2012 - a record of a year in the life of...



Snow days – Celebrations  - Assassinations - Man dies rescuing dog…

A woman walks along a snow covered road in Sixfields, Northampton, following overnight snowThe frosty brightness of the snow covered hills, even
at five am gleamed extraordinary, extra-terrestrially,
across the vale, as severe weather warnings amid breaking
news of crashed vehicles, blizzard-blanketed, de-railed and
haphazard, threatened a smooth sojourn into work.

Frosties crackled in bowls, mocking melting icicles 
momentarily caught mid-state from solid to liquid,
in sub-zero Siberian temperatures, before returning to
dangerously black ice, awaiting further victims in the
quietude of drips and sunshine, as breaking dawn
streaks pink glows across the frozen skies.

Economists count up lost commerce, mirrored by
bean-counters in local authorities, fearing for budget
deficits in policing, fire, ambulance services.  Rapidly
re-writing policies in NHS back offices, stretching limited
bandages, preserving prescriptions for a sick economy,
made sicker by politicians and weather alike.

Amid met-office ‘yellow’ warnings and school closures,
BBC tells of ‘ghost’ trains, cancelled flights.  And disruption
is measured in millimetres; the realities are more simply defined
in reports of death – un-named people on numbered roads as
freak conditions and perfect storms play havoc with life, pictured
in Technicolor, over a billion electronic signals of light.

Kim Jong UnOn another channel, fairy-tale images 
from a far-away world tell Jubilant crowds majestic tales…a stark contrast with the 
hasty re-tweeting of Kim Jong un’s ...
assassination by social media.

So much snow; All in a week’s news.

Hazardous conditions…Man dies rescuing dog: BBC News  UK - 11 February 2012
Kim Jong un assassinated by social media: BBC News Asia - 10 February 2012
Jubilee Celebrations: Daily Telegraph – 12 February 2012

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

...Despite the Dangers of Social Networking...

...and the risk of becoming one of the 350m of a Facebook population of 750m around the world to develop FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder)... we announce the launch of our facebook presence...

And we wish our followers and friends a fabalicious Tuesday to all - please come visit and share....

Sunday, 5 February 2012

A warning on the dangers of social networking

Over breakfast, after the night before; the bacon crisply curled.  The Sunday Times lay open reviewing last week's world.  The discourse mulling over the success of the night before,  when Jo burst in, laptop in hand and slammed the kitchen door! 


This cannot be...It is not right!, we sheltered from her roar
My account has been erased; my ranking is no more!
It all appeared so farcical - we dared not say a word.
Her stormy face said everything; her mind was clearly heard.


This is my life she cried aghast; Have you no real friends?
My social network's virtual; my business at an end!
With no ethereal presence, I cease to be at all; 
No conversation; Business Deals - it's all gone to the Wall!


We looked at one another, unsure of what to say.  
Our coffee drunk; our bacon munched, we went our separate ways.
I have a lasting image of a girl I used to know.
Her profile's been expunged now; she has no place to go.


She has no conversation and nothing left to do. She's vanished into cyber-space and my advice to you is: if you want to live your life on-line as others do, beware of being deleted - the choice is up to you!


An Apocryphal  Birthday Poem for Style Guru Jo, of whom we are very fond.

Saturday, 4 February 2012

A poem a week for 2012 - a record of a year in the life of...

Two Cities...World's Apart




Early morning rays shaft polluted atmosphere, piercing a waking dawn,
as pedlars don rough suits; load rickety trucks for the two day trudge
across their city, to market. Following their ancestors' traditions.


Livestock loaded; poultry piled, legs tied, squarking, all the while less enthusiastically, towards catatonia; over parched dusty roads. On their way to certain death.


Caskets and cases of exotic fruits and vegetables, lovingly tended under protective tunnels, breathe filthy air.  Lose glow.  Gain grimy film of city-stain.  Each mile reducing yuen value on this cross-town pilgrimage for survival.



Mile after mile of rural aspect gives slowly to greater urban sprawl.  Homeless beggars wander municipal parks at midday, shuffling restlessly between monuments to great City men whose stone visages provide little comfort -  except to the pigeons;  disrespectful, ubiquitous, grey.

By late afternoon, sun fractured steel and glass glistens through tainted ether, where villages, towering skywards, draw far-flung commuters into myriad conurbations, vying for space with clamouring businesses, niching any available nook - mocking planned expansion and laughing at crafted landscapes.



Street vendors serve the steady stream of exhausted itinerants as they journey homeward after paying homage; some to Mammon others to existence; both fatigued, they travel the life blood arteries slashing the city; passing squats; eyeing mansions; surveying municipal gardens where hired dog-walkers balloon their charges over course amenity grass, bordered by heady scented, dusty orchids, hibiscus, lilies.




Public art, sitting in greying isolation, forgotten  commissions of momentary populism, nods its head in approval as dusk approaches, sighs on settling evening routines. 


The tentacles of Chongqing City - a sprawling - poorly defined home to thirty million, pull in the pedlars to the quietude of sleeping streets as moonrise  declares rest-time under canopied carts, before the final day into the heart of the metropolis, the epicentre of commerce, the harvest store of what's not the world's largest city.


-----


Quiz champion killed himself day after winning episode on EggheadsAcross the world, another story of struggle for survival sits equally awkwardly, as a man famed for a day -olympian of TV quiz show - hurls himself noiselessly off a multi-storey car park in anther grey city. 


 All those brains, unable to fathom life.